This will solve everything for your novel. At least that’s my hypothesis.
Or checkout the ‘Hollywood Heist’ backlot.
Gordon Bombay’s Ghost
Image: The Mighty Ducks (1992), The Walt Disney Company
I've lost the exact passage now but my latest takeaway from Donald Maass's The Emotional Craft of Fiction is that what underpins every scene is the character’s deep emotional need, something of which they are probably not conscious of.
This is the difference between the hero’s want and the need: our protag. starts out trying to obtain something they think will fix them only to discover they needed something else.
For instance, The Mighty Ducks (1992): When Gordon Bombay is assigned to coach the Ducks as community service for drunk driving all he wants is to get back to his high-flying job at the law firm. What he learns along the way is that his soul needed saving. He needed the Ducks to teach him (to remind him) what was important in life.
But why did Bombay think the ivory tower would save him in the first place? Because he was lost. Traumatized. After being touted as Minnesota's best pee wee hockey prospect he left the game entirely after missing a championship deciding penalty shot. He was told he let everybody down. Gordon Bombay is suppressing his trauma. His shame. He’s suppressing the Ghost.
Image: The Mighty Ducks (1992), The Walt Disney Company
In Creating Character Arcs, K.M. Weiland explains:
“Ghost” is movie speak for something in your character’s past that haunts him…
Weiland also points us to a quote in the Negative Trait Thesaurus, by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi:
Wounds are often kept secret from others because embedded within them is the lie—an untruth that the character believes about himself.
The lie Gordon Bombay believes is the key to the entire movie. The Ghost dictates how he walks through every scene.
So, getting back to our own novels, the key to being able to write your story is knowing your character’s Ghost and what is the Lie that they believe.
From my own experience on Hollywood Heist I have the entire thing written and am still figuring out Jenny’s lie. And I still don’t know all the details about her Ghost. I guess it sometimes takes writing your manuscript to find out what your character is really fighting.
I've been getting a sense through the editing phase and the more I figure out, the easier it becomes. Knowing the Ghost/Lie dictates how she feels, what she’s thinking, what she’s suppressing, and what she’s afraid of. It also informs what she has to face in order to move on. That's the climax, where the internal and external plots collide.
On book two I am going to try and see if I figure out the Ghost up front, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I will have to write my way to it again. It’s strange to think that the heart of a novel is buried inside you.
That’s probably why Stephen King calls it ‘excavating’.
Happy writing, happy Friday.
Charlie
Image: The Mighty Ducks (1992), The Walk Disney Company
Have some thoughts? Feel free to drop a comment or hit me up: charlie@charleskunken.com
Other Posts In The Hollywood Heist Series
Please judge.